


Of all the stars in the sky

by creepingdarkness



Category: The Derp Crew
Genre: Camping, M/M, Swearing, falling star au, probing mention?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 21:26:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8939944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creepingdarkness/pseuds/creepingdarkness
Summary: What do you do when you meet a fallen star?





	1. Chapter 1

In hindsight, he doesn’t know why he expected anything different. Maybe it was that soft glow the almost set sun cast over scene, or the gentle touch at his elbow along with the whispered words. Most likely it’s because he’s rather naive when it comes to anything even semi-related to romance. All he was expecting was to sit on the beach and to maybe hold hands under the stars.

Today was the last full day of the trip. Anthony was in a co-ed outdoor gym class, and for the end of the year they were taken to a lake deep in the woods on a so called ‘camping trip’. To him it felt more like they brought him hell, a very very wet hell. It had been raining almost nonstop the past two days, creating deep muddy segments they were forced to bike through that coated him with mud and a rather sketchy canoe trip across the lake despite the close crackle of thunder. Worst of all though was at night, any slight brush against the fabric of their tents letting more of the water inside, one pair of girls’ tent flooded entirely the first night (luckily one of the teachers brought a spare tent, no such luck with the sleeping bags though). Thankfully his groups tent only suffered a couple puddles in the dips around the sides of the tent.

The rain had finally let off this afternoon making the planned activities a little bit easier to bear, although the rainclouds still hung within sight. His highlight of the day though had been at sunset when Adam, one of the more attractive guys in his class had pulled him away from his two friends. Anthony was mildly concerned until the moment they were alone and Adam just straight up admitted to liking him, and when Anthony didn’t react poorly to that, moving in closer to shyly ask him to meet him near the beach that night.

Anthony normally had a personal rule against things like this, wandering off at night in the middle of nowhere with a guy he only semi-knew. But hey, as far as he knew Adam was a decent guy (very decent looking too), and the tingles he got from the hand on his arm mixed with the electric feeling in his chest had his mouth agreeing for him before his brain had even finished processing.  Adam had smiled brightly at that, giving him a time to meet then rushing off before Anthony could even recover.

Anthony tells his friends before he goes, just on the off chance he really is some sort of crazy killer. He leaves to the shouts of ‘don’t get murdered’ and ‘wrap it up I don’t want to be a grandpa yet’ to which he just calls back “You’re not my real dad anyway!”

After struggling down barely there trails in the faintest moonlight he finally makes it to the beach only to be immediately tackled into the sand. He nearly let out a scream before recognizing Adam, only just managing to turn it into an embarrassingly undignified squeak. Things moved quickly from there, a brief conversation he couldn’t remember a single word from, and then they were kissing. Then the kissing became more as Adam climbed on top of him, body pushing him down into the sand as he started rolling his hips down into Anthony’s.

It’s not that it doesn’t feel good, because my god the feeling of Adam pressing against him was so good it should be illegal. It’s also not because he doesn’t want it, because he does, just not quite so much so soon. Anthony uses one hand to push Adam back a bit, about to try and somehow explain what he wants when there’s a loud crackling boom and a bright flash of light streaking across the sky, followed by a softer boom and a sweeping gust of wind as he watches it land somewhere in the trees far off to the right.

“Holy crap did you see that? That meteor landed so close!”

“No I didn’t see it; I was a little bit busy.” Adam said with a grin, his smile just barely visible in the dark while Anthony’s blush at that was hopefully hidden. Then Adam started leaning back in towards him, and the next words to come rushing out of Anthony’s mouth were nowhere near what he was planning to say.

“I’m going to go find it.”

At that Adam instead moved to lay on his side in the sand beside Anthony. “You know that probably only looked like it landed nearby, it’s likely miles away.” He sighed and put a hand on Anthony’s shoulder “If you don’t want this you can just say it, no need to go running off after stars and getting lost in the woods.”

Anthony cringed. “No no no! it’s nothing like that,” he back-peddled quickly “I’m just really into stars.” He added lamely.

“Sure Anthony.” Adam laughed, obviously seeing through the weak excuse. “The rainclouds look like they’re coming back, so we should head back either way.”  
   
“No, I’m going to go find it, you should head back though” Anthony decided he had to go through with it, if not to make Adam feel better then at least for his own pride.

“That doesn’t seem to safe man, there could be bears, or you could get lost or injured! You should at least let me go with you if you’re not heading back.” Adam tried to reason with him. Damn Adam made a good argument, but his mind was already made.

Standing up he quickly brushed off all the sand he could reach on his clothes. “Don’t worry I’ll be fine! I won’t go too far, and it’s better if you go back that way we can’t both get lost, and if I’m not back by morning you can send a search party in the right direction!” he said before taking off into the woods as fast as he could in the dark towards where he thought he saw it land. He heard Adam call after him, but he was long gone into the darkness before the other guy could even think of getting up to follow him.


	2. Chapter 2

Anthony’s search for the star was going horribly, as expected. Like Adam had said, it probably landed miles and miles away despite how close it seemed. He’d been walking long enough to get mildly lost with all the deer trails and bushes he’d gone through, but figured if anything he could head towards where the lake should be sort of sitting alongside him. Hell, he wasn’t even that interested in the falling star, he would’ve turned back a while ago if he wasn’t trying so hard to prove something to Adam. What he was actually trying to prove though, he had no idea, and likely it was something Adam didn’t even need him to prove. But alas, he was going to do it anyway (even if he absolutely did not want to be in the spooky woods alone at night). 

Pausing for a moment to catch his breath from climbing through so many bushes, he heard the rushing windy sound of approaching rain that had been muffled by all the noise he’d been making. Crap. Screw his pride, it definitely wasn’t worth getting drenched and ending up sick for ages again. Anthony immediately began cutting towards where he figured the lake was. 

It was then that he came across an area that may have once been either part of the forest or a nice little clearing. Now though it was a torn-up crater containing a blobby figure that wasn’t quite glowing, but was definitely brighter than anything else. He felt the first drops of rain begin to fall on him as he just stood there staring, not entirely sure what he was looking at. 

“Hey, you up there!” the figure called out in a slightly deep voice, making Anthony glance around in panic as he searched for whatever the figure was talking to. “Dumbass in the red hoodie!” At that he raised a hand to his chest and looked down, yep, he was still wearing his red hoodie but it looked almost black in the darkness. “Yes you! Are you just going to stand there like a creep, or are you going to help me up?” 

“I can’t even see you properly!” he called out defensively, before realizing that he was probably talking to an alien “Wait, are you going to eat me?” he started sweating despite the cold “Oh god, are you going to probe me?” his voice raising as he continued without leaving an opening for a response “I’m too young to be the crazy person talking about being probed aliens in the tabloids! How am I going to explain this? I should’ve just gone back, screw this! I don’t want to die like this, I’m too-“

“STOP!” the figure yells “I’m not an alien! I’m not going to probe you or eat you, geez dude I just wanted some help out of this damn hole.”  
He considers that for a moment, and goes over to the edge of the crater to get a better look. Squinting down at them, he realizes they’re less of a spooky figure and more like a person sitting and cradling the side of their head. “Are you okay?”

“Hit my head on a rock, rolled my ankle and I haven’t been able to climb out of here, so I could be better.” They replied sounding strained and pitiful.

Never one to abandon someone in distress Anthony sighed. “Just hold on I’m coming down.” He called out as he began sliding down towards them, the rain quickly turning the mud from the past rainfall slick again. Reaching the bottom, he was only a couple meters from what he could now tell for sure was just a guy, not a scary alien. “Hey I’m Anthony by the way, sorry for being weird earlier. I saw a meteor that looked like it landed somewhere nearby, so when I just saw a shape in a crater my mind just sorta jumped to the conclusion that you were an alien that was gonna, you know, do something alien-y.” he explained, pulling up his hood midway through as both a distraction from his embarrassment from overreacting and to stop the cold raindrops that were directly hitting the back of his neck.

“I’m Ze, and no problem, we don’t come here that often and when we do we tend to keep it quiet. So, it’s totally reasonable to be called an alien.” The guy said so calmly that it took Anthony a couple moments to get what he actually said.

And that’s when the panic kicked in.

“No no no, no you sa- you said-” he barely managed to cough out as he backed up, immediately falling back onto the steep muddy slope. God, why did he have to be the cliché horror movie victim? As the ‘not alien’ got up and came towards him Anthony desperately tried to crawl backwards out of the crater, never taking his eyes off the approaching being.

“But you already knew that, didn’t you witch?” Ze’s voice was now full of spite. Anthony watched in horror as they started getting brighter. Within seconds he was able to make out all the features of what still looked exactly like a regular guy, if regular guys gave off more light than a flashlight and had their hands full of fire. Scratch that, he looked like a lot more like an avenging angel. “I’m impressed you got here so fast, but you won’t be getting my heart.”

Anthony had no idea what Ze was talking about, but as the flames drew closer he covered his eyes with his arm as a shield from the light, and started panic-talking a mile a minute “I’m sorry angel dude, I’m not a witch, I don’t want your heart, I’m just here on a class trip, and I promise if you let me live I’ll go straight to church when I get back! I promise!”

Ze was so close that the heat of his flames was starting to burn him through the wet sleeve. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” they started laughing “are you serious?”

Immediately after making an affirmative sound Anthony felt the heat near his arm fad and heard the sound of something hitting the ground next to him. He waited a long and painfully tense minuet before lifting his arm away from his eyes, everything was dark again and looking to the side he could see the now dark figure of Ze flopped on the ground, head back in his hands. As if sensing him looking Ze turned towards him. “Well, ready to go then?”


	3. Chapter 3

“…What?”

“Are you ready to go?” Ze repeated, this time slower and more pronounced.

“Where?”

“Wherever you were going before this, I don’t really care as long as we leave before someone else shows up.”

“Well on that ominous as fuck note, why would I want to bring you with me? You were about to kill me! Why would I bring you to kill more people?” he glared at the dark shape that was still just laying so casually on the ground beside him.

“I promise I’m not going to hurt you or anybody else as long as they don’t try to harm me.” Ze put a hand on Anthony’s leg as if he was trying to pass along the sincerity that couldn’t be seen in his eyes in the dark, but all he did was pass along a burst of adrenaline that crawled along Anthony’s spine and filled his chest with a tingling static feeling. He was being touched by an angel, one that had been shining with hands full of burning fire barely two minutes ago. “Plus I didn’t actually kill you, or even really hurt you. That’s gotta count for something, right?” 

Trying to even out his breathing Anthony just looked at him. It seemed like this angel was joking with him, but he couldn’t really be sure. Ah hell, what’s the worst that can happen? It’s not like Anthony could really stop him, plus Ze would probably be able to find the campground soon enough anyway even if he didn’t help. Time to embrace the horror movie cliché of this situation. “I guess, after you then.” He sighed and gestured up the slope of the crater.

“You’re not going to help me?” Ze questioned as he got back up, still favoring the ankle he said he rolled. 

“…..No?”

Ze just silently stared at him through the darkness, or more likely glared, for a few moments before going to scramble up the muddy slope. Within a couple seconds it was clear he had no idea where to put his hands feet as he kept sliding back down. Anthony just sighed, watching him fail horribly for another minute before he finally gave up on the hope of him getting up on his own and got Ze to grab onto his belt as an anchor to help pull him out. They made it out with only a few slips after that, but it still left Anthony’s front as muddy as his backside was. The only real difficulty in it all was getting Ze to let go of him once they were out, the angel dude seemed very concerned about any possibility of falling back in.

After a brief moment to orient himself Anthony set off towards where the lake should be with Ze following faithfully behind him, only to immediately trip over a log. His landing wasn’t the gentlest of things and Ze’s instant laughter just rubbed salt into his already wounded ego.

“How about helping me up instead of laughing you jackass angel!” he sassed, immediately regretting it upon considering who, or rather what he was talking to.

Ze just laughed though, and offered him a hand. “Alright alright, chill out!” he said pulling him up before ducking his head and running a hand through his hair “Also, I’m uh, I’m not an angel, I’m a star.”

Anthony slumped back down onto the log he had just tripped over. He felt betrayed, but he was the one who just kept assuming things about Ze. Still, it was sort of a lie by omission on the others part, and as his rescuer didn’t he deserve the truth?  “Why didn’t you mention this sooner?” he mumbled as he buried his face into his hands, accidently smearing his face with more mud. Things just kept getting worse.

He felt the heat as Ze hovered behind him unsurely for a second, before placing a warm hand on his shoulder. Anthony shivered at both the jolt he felt, and the reminder of how cold and wet he was becoming. “I’m sorry Anthony.” Ze said softly and carefully, testing out his name for the first time. “But you seemed willing to help an angel, and I could really use some help.”  He kept his grip on him as he moved around to crouch in front of him, bringing them to the same level. “Can you forgive me?” 

After several long moments filled with nothing but the patter of rain Ze moved to leave, only to immediately be stopped by Anthony’s hand clutching his arm. “Wait.” He paused, letting go of him. “I’ll help, but is there anything else that I should know first though?”

“Probably,” Ze’s voice was tinged with amusement but still had a serious edge to it. “there’s a lot I could tell you, but I have no idea what will actually end up being relevant.” He paused for a moment thinking. “There’s almost definitely going to be witches after me, so if there’s any sign of them you should leave me.”

“Why?” he asked, easily accepting that witches were real considering that he was talking to a star.

“They could easily kick your ass, or worse.”

“No, I meant why are they after you? For your heart, right?” he asked recalling what Ze had said when he thought he was a witch. “Plus I could totally kick some old lady’s ass!” he added defensively.

“Sure Anthony, sure. You know you look as threatening as a soaked little kitten currently, right?” he laughed at the offended sound Anthony made before getting serious again. “But yeah, they’ll be after my heart. We should get going.”

With that silence fell between the two as they started towards the lake again, only broken by Anthony’s soft curses when he tripped or slid in the mud. Ze on the other hand managed to dodge all the obstacles despite limping the whole way.

After about the 20th time of tripping over some unseen object Anthony broke the silence. “Ze how are you not tripping on this stuff? Could you light up again so I can see?”

“I can see fine, this isn’t even dark compared to space, but I’m kind of out of energy after freaking out at you earlier. Sorry about that by the way. We’re almost at the lake though, I can see it through the trees ahead of us.”

Sure enough within a minuet they had reached the sandy edge of the lake. As he lead them along the beach Anthony tried to decide if it was better or worse being out of the trees, on one hand he could see a little better and there was less to trip on, but on the other hand there was nothing protecting him from the driving rain that had long ago soaked through his clothing. By the time they reached the short trail leading to his camp he was so cold he was shaking. He held a finger up to his mouth to signal Ze to be quiet as they crept past all the dark tents, quickly arriving at the only tent that had light coming from it. 

“Shit.” The whispered curse came out. Anthony had completely forgotten about his tent mates, or more accurately had refused to think about how he was going to explain any of this to them. Too late to think about now. As his slightly numb fingers struggled to unzip the tent door the zipper got pulled from him as the tent seemingly unzipped itself to reveal the culprit on the other side, a pissed off looking Galm.

“Where the hell have you been? Adam told us you ran off into the woods after a shooting star! Another couple minutes and we’d be getting him and starting a search party for your dumb ass!” Galm whisper yelled sounding more worried than pissed, before he noticed the figure of Ze behind him. “Who is that?”

“I’m really sorry, can we come in first? Its pouring out here.” Anthony whispered back, and once the entrance was clear he was gratefully stepping into the tent and taking off his muddy shoes to set by the door, and was mildly surprised to see Ze already doing the same, it seemed far too normal of an action.

“So, you leave with one cute guy and come back with another?” Smarty his other tent mate finally piped up from his spot in the back corner where he was wrapped up in his sleeping bag, playfully winking at Ze. “I wish I had game like that.”

“No you wish you had any game at all.” Anthony quickly countered, snickering at Smarty’s overly dramatic shocked gasp.

“You guys are absolutely soaked and covered in mud, what were you doing out there?” Galm quickly inserted before they could start yet another long session of bickering. “I’m Anthony by the way.”

Leaving Ze to answer Galm’s question Anthony walked over to his things and started digging around in his bag, pulling out a beach towel and two sets of pajama-ish clothing (thank god for over packing). 

“I’m Ze. He pulled me out of a hole. I thought his name was Anthony?”

“Yeah we both have the same name. You can call us by our nicknames, me Galm and him Chilled, if it gets too confusing. Is Ze short for something? And what were you doing in a hole?”

“No its just Ze, and I fell then got stuck.”

Anthony tossed one pile of clothes at Ze when he caught his eye, before going back to his own, stripping off the wet ones and chucking them in a corner where they wouldn’t soak anything important. Galm and Smarty turned to give them privacy while Ze just watched him for a moment before doing the same. Stripped down to his underwear he toweled off before sneaking a glance at Ze, who was currently struggling out of his pants. His gaze flashed from head to foot, quickly taking in the long expanse of Ze’s pale skin, normal looking except where most people would be covered in freckles he had something similar looking but they were paler than the rest of his skin, and Anthony assumed they might glow in a darker setting. His assessment was cut short when his brown eyes met a questioning luminous green pair. With a blush he wordlessly passed over the towel before hurriedly finishing stripping then putting on the dry clothing.

“So what were you doing in the woods at night anyway Ze? And why did he bring you back here instead of where you came from?” Galm continued his questions once they were fully dressed again. Anthony went to answer but Ze beat him to the punch.

“It’s just where I landed, and he brought me here because I can’t go back to the other stars yet.” Ze said it as casually as if he was simply talking about the weather. Anthony wanted to face palm at his answer.

“That’s nice. Hey, uh Chilled, can you come her for a sec?” Galm called him over. Anthony winced at his tone, and shot a glare at Ze, who if his wide smile was anything to go by knew fully well how much trouble he just got him in. Smarty got up and took this opportunity to both introduce himself and distract Ze from the others conversation.

“Dude what the fuck?” Galms voice was pitched so quietly Anthony almost had trouble hearing it. Anthony debated whether he should lie to his closest friends or only partially tell the truth. All his options kinda sucked though so he went with Ze’s method, go big or go home.

“So, remember that ‘shooting star’ I ran off after?” He tried to joke, looking anywhere but at Galm.

“Chilled, you can’t seriously believe him?” 

“It’s hard not to believe when the guy lights up like a spotlight and starts on fire.” He finally looked back at Galm to judge his reaction, and met his gaze which was filled with concern and disbelief in equal measures.

“Either you hit your head on something pretty hard while you were out there or this is the worst prank ever.”

“No I can totally prove it! Or, well, he can, if he’s not too tired.” Anthony countered, mildly insulted by what Galm said, even though this all did sound pretty far-fetched.

“Chill-” Galm was cut off by Anthony calling for Ze, which also interrupted whatever him and Smarty were laughing about. He felt slightly guilty when their gazes met and the laughter in his eyes faded once again into a more serious questioning look.

“Could you do...” he trailed off thinking. Ze said he was too tired for the light thing, and even if he wasn’t too tired for the fire thing doing it in the tent was probably a bad idea. Thinking back over everything Ze had done so far he came up with an idea. “the seeing in the dark thing! I’ll turn off the lamp, then you guys can hold up some fingers and Ze will tell you what they are!” he quickly moved to the lamp on the ground in the middle of the tent, flicking it off and plunging them into almost absolute darkness before anyone could argue.

He heard a much put upon sigh from where Galm was, then a couple long tense moments (at least for him) before Ze spoke up. “Uh Smarty’s just doing jazz hands, and Galm is giving you the middle finger right now.”

“That doesn’t prove anything other than you’re either good at guessing, or have really good eyesight.”

“Fine,” Ze sounded slightly exasperated “how about this then?” he didn’t glow anywhere near as brightly as before, looking kind of like a dying glow-stick, but in the darkness of the tent it was very visible. His faint glow quickly faded as he moved to take the lamp from Anthony and turn it back on.  “I’m a star, and I’m really really tired. I promise I’m not going to do anything bad to you guys, so can we please go to sleep and talk about this tomorrow?”

There was a long silence where Galm and Smarty just looked between him and Ze as if they were waiting for the other shoe to drop. Smarty was the first of the two to recover, shrugging it off as if it was an everyday occurrence.

“Well you know, technically it is tomorrow already, since its well after midnight.” 

“Hey Smarty?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut the fuck up.” This had everyone cracking up before they remembered they had to be quiet, their laughs tapering off into quiet wheezes. Once calmed down Smarty and Galm got into their sleeping bags, the latter still keeping a slightly wary gaze on Ze, but making no suggestion to kick him out. 

“Sooooo, what are we doing for sleeping arrangements?” Anthony asked slightly awkwardly, realizing they only had the three sleeping bags, his currently being the only unoccupied one. Ze shrugged uncaringly, looking about ready to collapse where he stood. The other two just shook their heads when he turned his pleading gaze towards them.

“You brought him, you gotta sleep with him.”  He couldn’t really argue with that, even if he felt his nerves fraying at the idea of being pressed up against him all night. With a soft sigh he turned off the lamp and carefully made his way towards where his sleeping bag was. Slipping into it he waved Ze over, Ze wasn’t totally able to fit into the sleeping bag too and zip it up, leaving him slightly out of it, but he waved off Anthony’s apologies mumbling that he was warm enough anyway.   
Long minuets passed, and Anthony couldn’t fall asleep. He tried to match his breathing to the slow even breaths of Ze beside him, but his heart wouldn’t stop racing. Eventually he gave up and just listened to Galms soft snores.

“Anthony you’re shaking?” Ze’s whisper came from right beside his ear on their shared pillow, warm breath making the hair stand up on the back of his neck.  
“Yeah, I’m just a little cold still.” He half lied. He was still chilled from his forest adventure earlier, but that wasn’t the whole reason.

“I can help with that.” Ze unhesitating as he pressed himself closer, wrapping an arm around him. It did help with the cold since Ze was hot like a furnace, but Anthony’s heart was still beating like a humming bird was trapped in his chest. “You know, you never answered my question.” Ze’s voice was starting to get husky with tiredness.

Anthony’s voice seemed to be caught in his throat for a moment, he swallowed thickly, keeping his face towards the roof not daring to turn towards Ze as he replied. “And what was that?”

“I asked if you could forgive me.” His voice was soft and hesitant, he sounded worried about the answer. Something in Anthony’s chest loosened at that, but he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because it made Ze seem more human and less… other.

“Yeah, I probably can.” Anthony’s shaking was slowly subsiding thanks to Ze, and as he started to calm down he finally drew closer and closer to sleep.


End file.
